Anthony Weiner Announces NYC Mayoral Bid (Video)

Posted on May 22, 2013

In an attempt at a political comeback after accidentally sharing his sex life with the world through Twitter, Andrew Weiner has decided to run for New York City mayor. The six-term congressman resigned amid the sexting scandal in 2011.

Weiner made the announcement Wednesday via a two-minute video posted online in which he talks about his childhood in Brooklyn and presents himself as a champion of the middle class. He “decries rising rents, inadequate schools, overregulated neighborhood businesses, and a paucity of ‘good jobs with benefits,’ ” The New York Times reports.

Weiner says: “Look, I made some big mistakes, and I know I let a lot of people down. But I’ve also learned some tough lessons. I’m running for mayor because I’ve been fighting for the middle class and those struggling to make it my entire life. And I hope I get a second chance to work for you.

“The very people that put everything they had into this city are getting priced right out of it,” he adds. “But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Although his tenure in Congress has often been derided as unproductive, in the video Mr. Weiner says he won money to hire police officers in the city, fought for assistance for first responders to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and helped win the battle to pass a health insurance overhaul.

… Since he resigned from Congress under intense pressure from Democratic Party leaders in the summer of 2011, Mr. Weiner has opened a strategic consulting firm that allowed him to cash in on his Washington connections.

... His political philosophy has always been something of an anomaly in the city’s more liberal Democratic world. He has called for a single-payer health care system and pushed for hybrid taxis even as he has proposed tax cuts and voted for the war in Iraq.